Content providers derive revenue directly or indirectly from subscribers. Therefore, content providers, including, for example, advertisers, content creators, and content distributors strive to identify desirable subscribers. A subscriber may be desirable for any number of reasons. For example, a subscriber may be desirable due to past spending or viewing patterns, which indicate a propensity for exhibiting a related behavior that the content provider considers desirable. For example, the subscriber may also be desirable due to the subscriber's demographic profile, including the subscriber's age, income, or other attribute. A desirable subscriber is a subscriber who is likely to make a decision to purchase a product or service or to view a provider's content.
Content providers utilize various methods to identify desirable subscribers, such as monitoring the subscriber's content-access patterns and performing surveys to determine a subscriber's demographic profile. For example, a television-programming provider may implement a program of voluntary logging of television viewing by a viewer, followed by transmission and human processing to analyze the information contained in the log. In addition, a provider may utilize telephone, mail, or other types of surveys to inquire from random or selected viewers about the viewers' viewing habits and request their recollections regarding their viewing patterns. A provider may also utilize automated monitoring systems that attempt to intercept television channel choices and changes, record these events, and provide the recording to a clearinghouse or other facility for further processing.
The provider may enlist a ratings company to perform the monitoring and processing. For example, Nielsen Media Research (Nielsen Media Research, Inc., New York, N.Y.), Arbitron (Arbitron Inc., New York, N.Y.), and MeasureCast (MeasureCast, Inc., Portland, Oreg.) provide third-party monitoring and processing capability for television, radio, and Internet content.
The Nielsen Media Research (Nielsen) Ratings are perhaps the best known of the various third-party ratings services. Nielsen utilizes a variety of conventional sampling methods to determine the number of viewers watching a particular show. For example, in five thousand homes, Nielsen installs a People Meter. The People Meter records viewing patterns from television sets, cable television set-top boxes, videocassette recorders, satellite television set-top boxes, and other sources of television programming. The People Meter records what content the particular device is providing on an ongoing basis and periodically transmits this information to servers within a Nielsen facility. Nielsen combines the data uploaded from the People Meter with media content data to determine what programming and advertising a device displayed. Nielsen uses the combined data to provide a rating for each program and advertisement. In conjunction with the People Meter, Nielsen also utilizes viewer diaries and surveys to gather information from a broader spectrum of television viewers and to confirm the results generated by the People Meter.
Arbitron Inc. (Arbitron) is well known for providing radio broadcast ratings. Arbitron compiles ratings by utilizing surveys. Arbitron also provides television ratings based on various sampling techniques. In cooperation with Nielsen, Arbitron has developed a Portable People Meter to measure television ratings. The Portable People Meter is a pager-sized device, worn by a participant in a survey. The Portable People Meter records viewing by recording sounds encoded into each broadcast, which identify the program or advertisement. The survey participant periodically plugs the Portable People Meter into a recharger, which also includes a communicator that uploads the data in the Portable People Meter into a remote Arbitron server. The Portable People Meter may be a more accurate method of television ratings than a set-top box, such as the set-top box used by Nielsen. The Portable People Meter offers the advantage of capturing viewing outside of the home and of recognizing when the viewer is not within audible range of a television, and therefore, less likely to be viewing a particular program or advertisement.
As the use of the Internet increases, the distribution of programming via Internet channels becomes more important. MeasureCast, Inc. (MeasureCat) provides a ratings system for Internet media streaming. MeasureCast records the number of streams requested from a streaming server and provides reports to programming providers and advertisers detailing the popularity of particular streams. As is the case in traditional broadcast media, the more popular the stream, the higher the advertising rate a broadcaster is able to charge.
Nielsen, Arbitron, and MeasureCast provide direct methods of measuring the popularity of a program. Various indirect methods are also used to determine the popularity of programming and the effectiveness of advertising. For example, advertising effectiveness is often measured in terms of viewer attitudes and subsequent viewer actions, such as purchases, inquiries, behavior changes, and other actions. Method of obtaining these indirect measures include: focus group tests, post-advertising surveys questioning whether an advertisement was viewed, remembered and possible impact, and measures of product purchases or other indirect results that may indicate whether or not an advertising campaign has been successful.
Conventional methods for identifying desirable subscribers are inefficient and ineffective in identifying specific subscribers or small groups of subscribers to which a content provider can direct resources. For example, conventional systems, such as the Nielsen and Arbitron meters, rely on small samples, which may not be representative of the target market for a particular content provider. Conventional methods for identifying desirable subscribers also lack an efficient means for matching the demographics, content-access patterns, spending habits, and other attributes with specific subscribers on a large-scale basis. Therefore, subscribers are targeted as generalized groups rather than accurately targeted as individuals or as members of small, homogenous groups.
Also, surveys are expensive and highly dependent on identifying individuals that may are of interest to the particular content provider sponsoring the survey. Post-advertising results measurements suffer from questions of causality and external influences. Focus groups allow reasonably efficient low-volume viewer analysis, but statistical analysis requires an adequate number of participants and tightly controlled tests, a combination that may be difficult to achieve.
Also, because comprehensive information about a subscriber is unavailable, it may be difficult or impossible in conventional systems to determine a causal link between a particular viewing pattern or attribute and an action. A subscriber may show an interest in a category, but the interest may not lead to an action. The content provider has no direct way of determining the causal link. For example, a subscriber may view many automobile programs or advertisements but never purchase a new automobile. A different subscriber may purchase new automobiles regularly yet never watch a program or advertisement devoted to automobiles. Establishing the causal link is of greater value to the content provider.